"Arena PVP" is Horrible

No, a single Developer said that, a long time ago; when talent trees were more complex, and Class balance was harder to maintain overall

If competitive PvP in GW2 is anywhere near as good as GW1, I think that's where you should be putting your hopes.

Yeah.

The problem is each class in WoW isn't balanced around 1V1 PVP--which is something that, if possible, would be really hard. It'd be easier to do if there were no talent trees.

And if a game isn't balanced for 1V1 encounters, then it's impossible for it to be balanced around 2v2, 3v3, etc., encounters. Unless they did something where they forced certain class combinations to fight only certain other class combinations.

2v2 was a messy balance situation; 3v3, and 5v5 are fine

Your logic is... going in many directions at once. You acknowledge that MMOs aren't balanced around 1v1, but then claim that because of that, 5v5 isn't balanced?

Arena stuff is fine so long as it isn't the only way to get your gear. I prefer wpvp and I don't want to be penalized because I don't want to sit in a box and fight a group of number crunching kids that think their performance in a video game actually matters.

And if the devs want to know how to make pvp that is good, stop looking at wow and start looking at DAOC.

As I said in my wall-of-text noone probably read, I'm perfectly fine with Arenas. I enjoy them, but I've always enjoyed the battleground/warzone style PvP more.

I'd like both, but I don't want one to dominate the other, or have such a significant influence on it. I was by no means a bad Arena player in WoW, I consistently made medium-high rating with my Warrior throughout every season save the most recent 2 (or 3? Not sure if any more have passed since I quit). I was always between 1800 and 2000 at the end of each season, peaking at 2247 in Season 3. While I was certainly nowhere near the top players, I consider myself a fairly decent player overall. In the end, Arena was just a sidegame to me. Something I did all the time, but only occasionally for fun. The main reason was to acquire gear that would allow me to be competitive in all PvP, namely Battlegrounds.

The issue in the end, was that a player who mastered the arena would often have gear far beyond that of someone who never touched it, making arena necessary for anyone to be competitive in Battlegrounds.

It all comes down to preference in my opinion. If you're all for the super competitive high level arena stuff, go for it! If you prefer the more chaotic style of Battlegrounds/Warzones, go for it! There's no reason the rewards from one should grant dominance of people who play the other. I liked the competition in arena, but too often it would come down to gear over skill, at least at lower ranks. The higher you rose and the more gear you acquired, the less this issue persisted, but it was an unnecessary barrier for entry into the arena. I can't help but wonder how many great PvPers got put off of arena because of this and simply backed out of it.

I'd love some arena-style competition in SWTOR, as long as Warzones aren't effected by said competition. Keep the gear open to all who PvP, regardless of whether it's in a competitive arena style or an open warzone. Base your competition on knowledge, skill, and experience. Not superior gearing. There are plenty of options for gear, those with incredible game knowledge can customise their character to succeed as they see fit without gaining ridiculous gear advantages over those who don't. It should come down to skill every time, regardless of whether you've been 50 for 5 months and the other guy's only been 50 for a week.

That's not a financially viable course of action

I haven't played the game in its current condition. But presuming you're correct, it's a little late. For a very long time Arenas had a monopoly on the top-level PVP items. You didn't get the best PVP items from World PVPing or doing Battlegrounds, in other words. You were forced to participate in Arenas if you wanted the best PVP gear.

Not necessarily. I'm sure if the most efficient way of getting the best items in the game was by banging your head against a wall, then rest assured, banging your head against a wall would suddenly become very popular.
Most of the veteran WoW players that I've talked to preferred World PVP over Arenas. That's just my own experience though.
You wrote items don't matter much in Arena play, and then went on to give an example of how items do affect Arena play.

Why? Star wars is a huge IP, bioware can do without the kids that want wow-style pvp.

Yes, obviously.

Let me give you an extremely simple example.

If all other things being equal (skill, items, etc.), A beats B (1V1).

Then what would happen if 5 As went up against 5 Bs.